Tag Archives: Curation

Wow, found this missive has been sitting in the ‘Drafts’ section for some time and thought I should get it out there!

The process of creating a pathfinder was challenging yet satisfying. The task really brought relevancy to the kinds of collaborative teaching and planning that a TL can do with classroom teachers. Ideally, the TL and the teacher together would identify the inquiry topic and assessment tasks, then research the types of resources that would be needed for these specific tasks and the level of language literacy ability within the student group. Agreement will have been reached about the content of the site and which pages might be interactive for the students. The ‘editing’ ability for the T and TL would need to be agreed too. The focused selection of appropriate resources and task-specific information saves countless fruitless hours of ‘Google’ searching. More time will be spent assessing and using the resources that have been evaluated by a TL as being uselful, relevant and authoritative. Access to a pathfinder or learning website would be a great reference for students and staff as they progress through the unit and whole research process. The interactive features allow ‘feedback’ information the be considered for evaluation of the learning and effectiveness of the tool.

Although on this occassion, I didn’t produce this pathfinder in collaboration with a colleague, the process of planning and creating the site was a valuable learning experience for future use. Creating a template for the pathfinder has now given me a format to use as an example for future reference.

While on my Work Placement at a P-12 college, I noticed that most ‘handout’ and booklet material had included some attribution to the creator. I decided to go back and have a closer look at Creative Commons and learn how to do that on my own work. So . . . I now have the symbols on the home page of my blog site and plan to use it on any future work I create. Will discuss this concept with colleagues at our face-to-face TL Network meeting this Thursday and add a similar widget to the TLsConnecting Blog.

Ideas connect and build . . .

Having gone into my ‘Dashboard’ to add a Creative Commons licence to my right sidebar (long overdue), I also noticed that the last 6 blog posts have been completed through my social book-marking connections. Namely – Scoopit and Pinterest. Both active and visually appealing places where I have RSS feeds finding me links based on topics I’ve chosen. Every other day I check the links that have been collected together for me and check out the ones I believe warrant closer inspection and then save some of the links and images to my own sites (boards and topics). Adding the link to my blog site was made easy earlier this year when Scoopit added a ‘pop-up’ that allowed me to send out a tweet about my find and/or place it directly onto my blog site. I like the idea – seems an efficient and effective way of saving and sharing the things I’ve found. What these links do lack (since they are placed quickly) is the categorisation and tagging I usually give to my posts. I need to check in and do that ‘little thing’ – to include them in my ‘searching system’ – as an item within my collection, each is desperately in need of ‘description’ – so I can later find them through their access points! So, the concepts I’m learning in ETL505 I am able to apply to my own digital collection. Wow, I feel like I am bringing it all together?!*

This is how I made the Pinterest pages for my school. This is as close to a step-by-step process as I can give. The best way to learn it is to play around with it yourself. Once you get the hang of it, it’s easy.

I started a Gmail account for my library and chose a password that I would feel okay sharing with other people. I want my aides and any other librarian who might follow me in the position to take over the social media accounts. I use this account for every social media account I use for my library.

This is how I made the Pinterest pages for my school. This is as close to a step-by-step process as I can give. The best way to learn it is to play around with it yourself. Once you get the hang of it, it’s easy.

I started a Gmail account for my library and chose a password that I would feel okay sharing with other people. I want my aides and any other librarian who might follow me in the position to take over the social media accounts. I use this account for every social media account I use for my library.